In Perugia, chocolate is an engine of development between taste and entrepreneurship

Under a sky of swift clouds, amidst the song of tropical birds and an unmistakable aroma, grow cacao trees full of fruit ready to be harvested. We are not in a South American forest, but in the large atrium that is the heart of the new City of Chocolate, an experiential museum in the historic centre of Perugia that since last November has become the largest hub in the world dedicated to the story and experience of one of the most beloved foods on the planet.

After years of disuse, the modernist spaces of the Mercato Coperto, built in the 1930s to house the stalls of the Umbrian capital's merchants, had long been in search of a project that would bring them back to the centre of city life. And fortunately they found the insight of Eugenio Guarducci, the entrepreneur who in 1994 created Eurochocolate, the international event dedicated to chocolate, which over the years has transformed Perugia into a favourite destination for chocolate connoisseurs and which last year attracted over a million visitors to the city.

By setting up a new company,Destinazione Cioccolato Srl, and by crowdfunding 198 investors, he signed a 30-year lease agreement with the municipality for the Mercato Coperto and invested 6 million euro in a project that is already a success just a few months after its launch: 'We have already registered 25,000 admissions, beyond our expectations,' says Guarducci.

A success generated by the City's own, peculiar formula, which offers both a in-depth and multiform account of cocoa and chocolate - with panels, showcases, multimedia and multi-sensory installations that tell its history and geography, also with the support of pieces from precious collections - as well as a 'chocolate factory' where one can make one's favourite bar, taste the different crus, buy the most famous creations together with the rarest in a huge Choco Shop. All embraced by a panorama that opens brightly over the wide Umbrian valley.

The story of the industrial history of chocolate is also original and compelling, from its earliest origins, the import of seeds by Hernán Cortés to Spain in the 16th century, to the birth of large companies in Switzerland and Belgium in the 19th and 20th centuries. And one discovers, or remembers, that Italia is also rich in chocolate districts: the one in Piedmont, with the Turin of the Savoy dynasty, where the bicerin and gianduiotto are born, but also Sicily with Modica ("where chocolate is produced as the Aztecs did", notes the entrepreneur), as well as lesser-known realities such as Tuscany, "with a district founded by the Medici and still populated by small, excellent and avant-garde companies", Guarducci continues.